Let's just say in these uncertain financial times unscrupulous people will try to take advantage of you under the guise of 'economic' necessity. In 'normal' times these people would have a snow flake's chance of 'making you redundant' but today it is a different story. So if you haven't already, secure some income protection and then take a leaf out of Father's good friend Vyacheslav Molotov's book and embrace cocktails.

Now I'm all for the provincials holding on to their quaint working class grammar as it makes it so much easier to distinguish between us and them. However, my educated ear cannot abide those in the aspirational classes who insist on pronouncing the 't' in 'often'.

As Father's good friend H.W. Fowler wrote in the 1920s, 'The sounding of the t is practised by two oddly consorted classes - the academic speakers who affect a more precise enunciation than their neighbours... & the uneasy half-literates who like to prove they can spell...'

Life your game people!!!